Help (to be) wanted in these areas

With Labor Day approaching, the Census Bureau analyzed employment in the United States and concluded the hottest career paths are in computer science and health care. Economic forecasters project a 53 percent rise from 2006 to 2016 in the number of network systems and data communication analysts, the highest growth rate of any field.

Meanwhile, registered nursing is expected to add 587,000 jobs over the same period, the largest position increase of any occupation. For more information about promising career paths, check out http://www.census.gov.

Warp speed into the future

Imagine, if you will, a world without Twitter, Google, Safari, Facebook, Web sites.

Today's youth likely can't—but for those just a generation above or older, that was the reality. Computers were in their infancy and there was no such thing as YouTube or the World Wide Web. So it is that the Internet marks its 40th year tomorrow—and what monumental changes to global life and society it has wrought.

Few were paying attention back on Sept. 2, 1969, when some 20 people gathered in a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, to watch two bulky computers pass meaningless test data through a 15-foot gray cable, the Associated Press reports. That was the start of the fledgling Arpanet network; the researchers were seeking to create an open network for freely exchanging information. Since then things have snowballed and advanced with, yes, the speed of sound.